


Red dress.

by Luna_sharp618



Series: Hazbin Hotel Ficlets [3]
Category: Hazbin Hotel (Web Series)
Genre: Death, Drugs, Family hatred, Gen, Graphic Violence, Implied Sexual Activity, Overdose, Period Typical Homophobia, Sort Of, cross dressing, not between angel and arckniss, prostition, self hatred
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-30
Updated: 2019-03-30
Packaged: 2019-12-27 01:32:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18294140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luna_sharp618/pseuds/Luna_sharp618
Summary: He’s standing in the corner. Alone in the darkness of the ceedy little bar, looking out across the mob of drunken sailors and harlots that cling to them like limpets to the bottom of a ship. They’re all laughing and smoking and chattering and sinning and doing things that would surely make their mothers clutch their rosary beads in fear. He watches them with idle hunger, mindlessly picking at the frilly collar of his dress.His red dress.





	Red dress.

Red dresses are his favourite. 

There is just something magical about a red dress. The way it complements the pale expanse of freckled skin is so exquisite, like blood trickling down the pallid flesh of an enemy’s fresh corpse. It makes him feel perfect. It makes him feel like a work of art framed in satin and gold, merely there for the approval of others. To be observed and admired and hopefully pinned against a wall. 

God, he needs a drink. 

He’s standing in the corner. Alone in the darkness of the ceedy little bar, looking out across the mob of drunken sailors and harlots that cling to them like limpets to the bottom of a ship. They’re all laughing and smoking and chattering and sinning and doing things that would surely make their mothers clutch their rosary beads in fear. He watches them with idle hunger, mindlessly picking at the frilly collar of his dress. 

His red dress. 

He had been so excited the whole day, thinking of this moment with such stoic intensity like a child on Christmas Eve. This moment- this one right here, right now- is what he's been looking forward to for weeks. What he has planned meticulously down to every last possible detail and now it's all falling into place like meteors crashing into solitary planets. 

God, he needs a cigarette. 

When the blinding light of day had finally turned to the submersive inkinesss of night did he throw this plan into action. Sneaking out the back door for a so called ‘walk’ and mapping out the shadowy alleyways like a common criminal.

He scoffs. 

As if there is anything common about him; The man wearing a red silk gown amongst a sea of roaring sailors and scar faced criminals, looking for just a sniff of attention from any man that would be drunk enough to take a peek under his blouse. 

It’s so fucking dark in here. He can barely see through the smog of sea salt, cheap brandy and clingy desperation that filters through the murky candle light like bubbles from a foaming waterfall. 

Brazenly his eyes scan the room looking for his one meal ticket. That one man that can save him from being suffocated in his crushing self-hatred and loneliness. He craves for that one stranger to find his eyes across the beer soaked floor, to sweep him away into the darkness and help him alleviate the boredom for an hour or two. 

It’s the most life threatening addiction he has. Yet the only one he can't seem to quit. 

Once more he casts a glance across the room, throwing his line, waiting for any chance at forbidden reciprocation with a batter of his mascara heavy lashes and artificial rose blushed skin. Whisky brown eyes searching with snappy desperation for a cure to his paralysing alienation. To fill that black void with the whispered praise of faceless abusers. 

He just wants to be perfect. 

For perfection is what they ask for. Demand, crave and Yearn for. What they search the shadows for in aloof little pubs like this that smell of sea salt and criminal intent. Perfection is what they punch, kick, rape and kill for. 

And it is a high he cannot bear to miss. 

Across the floor he sees him. A burly, bearded stranger with violet eyes staring straight through him while hunched over a half-drained pint of something or other. A distressingly sweet smile is plastered across the stranger’ expression as he scans over the red satin dress and the modified face of it’s illicit model. 

Slowly, he lifts a gloved hand through his constructed curls, whilst batting sleek eyelashes to start off the animalistic dance of courtship. 

The stranger downs his pint in reciprocation. 

His heart begins to thump at a sickly pace as the adrenaline begins to swarm his bloodstream like a hoard of angry bees- sending him into a hyper-aroused state of anaphylactic shock. 

The bearded man begins his sloth-like approach from his stiff bar stool, throwing money on the counter with dispassionate ease and stalking across the room like a tipsy panther. His staggering stride matching the drowsy pulse of our desperate hero, who now pinches their lip between fist-fight broken teeth and allows their eyes to wander to the back door- the one that leads up to his rented-out love nest for the night. 

The stage is set and the curtain rises- his mind is numb and his body ready to begin. 

That is until the bar door bursts open with a forceful burst of wind chaperoned by a large swarm of lively men- laughing and jibbing as they enter the already loud enough orchestra of drugs and liquor.

The cross-dresser pauses, watching the pack of men settle themselves like rain-swept birds upon the rafters of a derelict church, shaking the cold from their coats and correcting their ruined hair. He has momentarily forgotten the approaching mass of his brandy-breath caller as shock impacts him like a punch to the gut.

Amongst the crowd, cloudy, bloodshot eyes find his makeup caked face. 

A stranger fiding a stranger. 

A brother uncovering a brother. 

His sibling’s scarred face is momentarily caught in the cross hairs of shock and disbelief. Then twisting into a ugly sneer of human anger as their gazes lock and a storm of ill-mixed emotions rages between them. Fear bubbles up in his throat like a blackened bile, choking him of any rational thought as the world slows to a halt liken to a car crash. 

Instinct wills him to flee. All thought of his lumbering five minute lover is thrown from his mind as he bolts to the back room, carelessly upsetting tables and drinks as he goes- not daring to look back to see the man hot on his trail. 

\---

Panically he bursts into the dingy little bedroom, searching for salvation under the cover of it’s grimy, wood-rot walls and rusted lock. His heart pounds against his padded chest like a caged fighter, trying to break free and rid itself of this desperate situation as he pants short, distressed breaths. With a scrambled constitution he scans the room for any way to escape. 

For anyway to disappear as he prays for the earth to swallow him whole, burying him under the floorboards like the filthy, disgraceful rat he is. 

There’s an angry fist banging against the door now. It echos the rampant pounding of his heart in terrifying tandem as he spots the murky lamplight creeping in through the closed shutters of the room window. 

“Open the fucking door!” his brother demands with a biting scream. 

Briefly he pauses to thank whoever is sitting amongst the stars above for this irregular burst of luck before setting off like fox caught in the sights of a rabid mongrel toward the boarded up window. Adrenaline drowns out the incessant assault upon the door like a tsunami crashing about tempestuously in his ears. 

In this moment it is just an ensemble of white noise, blurring the edges of time akin to the effects of a potent concoction of favoured drugs as he scrambles to get this fucking window open. Desperately he claws at the stiff latch, chipping the polish on his nails and drawing blood with stray splinters that embed themselves into his calloused palms. 

“I swear- fucking open this door!” His brother growls with a sharp tone from behind the only barrier that sits between them like a half-arsed peacekeeper. 

He however doesn't even chance the slightest glimpse over his satin clad shoulder to check the looming danger literally knocking at his chamber door. Frantically he pushes at the stiff latch which refuses to budge in it’s idle stupor- not even thinking of how he’s going to build up enough courage to jump down to the barren street below when he finally manages to get this fucking window open. Blind panic is what drives him like a nefarious whip of a cart driver to the leathery hide of a worked up hackney horse. No sense or logic can tame him. 

“Open the fucking door!” with a thunderous bang the door slams open, creaking on it’s rusted hinges with a heinous screech, knocking down his only protection. 

Unbridled terror pales his painted face like a banshee from the tales their mother would spin at their shared bedside as he turns to embrace the cold sneer of his own flesh and blood. 

He is trapped. Helplessly pinned under his brother’s gaze like a pitious vermin restrained by the unyielding metal of a merciless snare. 

They hold each other's gaze for a moment. Humanly fear meeting the electric crackle of intense irate thunder halfway across the room, forcing the atmosphere to curdle into the thick tension that settles over a battlefield right before blood is spilt. 

“Please” he sobs, knees half-buckled like a weak colt, knuckles clutching the window behind him for support, looking so vulnerable. So helpless. So wrong. 

His brother snaps the suffocating tension with a thunderous stride across the no-mans-land that had been virgin between them. Only a withered gasp can be heard between the deafening footsteps that stampede upon the cheap carpet. 

The first connection of fist to flesh nearly incapacitates him. His vision blurs and mind swims with the inconceivable pain that swarms with his brain like enraged bees seeking their vengeance. His eye socket swelling up like a allergic reaction to his brothers righteous sting.

He no longer looks so gorgeous in his red dress. 

The second blow to the jaw is no less painful as he gives up his meager grip to the window sill and drops to the floor, akin to a rag doll they used to nick from the Lyons sisters that hung out on the street corner everyday. They would swipe it from their chubby grip and fling it over their heads like mocking hyenas, snickering with twin pride as the girls would yell and cry and be so helpless to their brotherly hijinks. 

That was when they were close. Years before the adult world crashed down upon them like a hail storm and they discovered the thin lines between crime and sin. 

Blood bubbles up in the back of his throat like iron rusted bile, dribbling down his chin and pouring from his nose as a series of fierce kicks rain down upon his padded chest, scuffing the velvet caress of his crimson gown. Ragged breaths burn akin to molten gold as they circumvent his abused lungs betwixt the enraged assault, blacked eyes brimming with mascara tears. Laying there like a damned harlot being occupationally abused, he looks into the darkness finally understanding that his deathbed may be upon this bloodstained carpet, wearing his ruined dress and sinful angony branded to his soul. 

The ghostly click of a pistol’s hammer pulls at his terrified mind with icy fingers, plunging deep into his thoughts and driving up the primordial fear of his psych like leaves caught in the wind’s powerful torrent. 

Above him stands his brother, looming and hateful with his weapon angled down to the helpless man below as if a cruel mockery of the grim reaper. 

“Please” he sobs between ragged breaths “don’t” he begs like a child. A sweet innocent child that knows nothing of the world beyond his backyard, “I’m your brother- please!”

For an immeasurable moment the silence between them condenses in a deafening orchestra of broken breathes and the party that still rages among the bar patrons below. His eyes clamping shut, waiting for the final snap of the trigger to end his wretched whimpering. 

“Get up” the grave tone of his brother’s voice vibrates across the spindled silence “leave and never come back- understand?”

The bloodied man peers up at his brother with a wounded gaze, dumbfounded in total confusion at the sudden juxtaposition of words and actions. Finally too weak to try to even utter a word of inquiry. 

“Leave town, leave the state- I don’t care, just never come back” a slight waiver of his callous tone almost cracking his concrete facade “or i’ll tell Pa what you are and he won't be as merciful as me” 

With that final statement, he leaves. Turns on his heel and disappears out into the gloominess of the drunken atmosphere like a spectre, fading out of view with a ghostly remnant branded into his bloodied knuckles. 

Languidly, he is spread upon the threadbare carpet, beaten black and blue with no reason for existence. He is floating, drowsy on the feeble dribble of adrenaline and drugged on the immeasurable burden of sadness that sinks low into his bruise-mottled chest like a hot stone to clear cut ice. All sense has abandoned him. 

He is helpless. 

Helpless and broken as life drags endlessly across his his battered skin liken to grains of sand, drowning him in the ceaseless quiet of defeat. 

Time helps to filter out the meaningless minutes of the in between moments. 

He still can’t remember how, when or where he got the syringe from but it’s harsh scrape against his goose-pimpled flesh serves as a axe swing through the veil of delusion he has slipped into. Fastened to his upper arm is a miraculously sourced length of silk, helping ease the shaky navigation of the needle’s path to an already scared vein. 

It enters with little resistance. Pushing down through flesh and secreting the honey sweet nectar of the new age, numbing the world to weightless bliss. 

He floats. Defying gravity and the morals of life which only exist to chain him mercilessly to the barren earth. A bird with clipped wings. A spider with broken legs. 

In a few moments from this fixed point in time his breathing will become slurred and witless mind will begin to question everything as his fingers turn numb. He will lay there for no longer than an hour, eyes rolling backward into the darkness of his depravity, a seizure wracking his beaten body, cold and alone with only the blood stained carpet as a deathbed. 

Comforted only by the sinful embrace of his bloodied red dress.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed! Please visit either my Instagram (brace_for_the_ace), my Twitter (Luna_bamboona) or my tumblr (Bill-and-till) for some art of this fic that I also did. 
> 
> And if you enjoyed this, why not check out my other works for Hazbin mostly featuring Alastor and his insatiable blood lust! 💜💜💜 
> 
> Kudos and comments are much appreciated 💜💜


End file.
